What to do with your first novel: write your own rejection slip

I've just read a friend's first novel on Kindle. I wish I hadn't.

Or rather, I wish I had read it in manuscript form, not as a published ebook.

And I wish she had asked me for a few tips.

But I imagine it's particularly painful asking for feedback when you are a senior communications consultant who has been writing reports and critiquing and correcting other people's work for the last 15 years. Or perhaps my friend wanted to keep fiction writing as a private treasure, not to be tinkered with by others.

The thing is, most people who actually finish a first novel quite rightly experience a burst of euphoria. Yes! To finish writing a novel is a mighty, marvelous, massive achievement. You are amazing! Your home town should declare a public holiday in honour of You and celebrate your achievement with fireworks and brass bands.

Even so, this was a first novel, written all alone in a creative cocoon. Is yours like the one I have just read — all description and no action? Endless cups of tea (or swigs of gin) and flashbacks? Characters that we can never like?

There are so many skills to learn as a novelist that it's impossible to master them all in one go: plot, character, dialogue, momentum, description, pace and structure are just the start. You learn little by little by writing more and more and more, again and again.

And then there's spelling. All first novels need a severe copy-edit, if nothing else, because we literally do not see our own errors of grammar, phrasing, spelling and formatting.

Kindle will not reject your unready manuscript: now you must write your own rejection slip — or at least a Needs more work letter. That's an impossible task for a new writer. With a first novel you are inexperienced by definition, so inevitably you misjudge the quality. It cannot be otherwise. Sometimes you think your book is much better than it really is.

So enjoy the euphoria. Celebrate. But please, for your own sake, don't publish your adored creation at this stage. You're a good writer and an expert business communicator, but you're not a novelist—yet. When you move on to the next stage and write something that's as much fun to read as it was to write, you'll be so relieved you didn't publish prematurely.

Years later, you'll look back on this manuscript in wonder. You'll toy with the idea of revising it, but it cannot be salvaged because you have moved on. Instead you may recycle one character or a snippet of conversation or perhaps the setting. And your next book will bring much more pleasure to you and your readers.


Image of Hypatia: in the public domain. I think she is rejecting her suitor. But he'll live.

Elsie's Scale of Terribleness: defusing a happy child's grief and despair

I thought I'd share with you Elsie's Scale of Terribleness.

You know how kids come home from school and say, "Today was the worst day in my entire life!" And they think life could hold nothing worse, because, thank heavens, nothing worse has happened to them so far.

But if they are inclined to dramatise and sob and collapse at the general Terribleness of Their Day, you might try using Elsie's Scale of Terribleness. That might bring a sense of proportion. Or not.

Here is the code to the glorious chart above.

Left Axis: the Scale of Terribleness, where 1 is only slightly terrible, and 10 is as terrible as it gets.
Bottom Axis: Terrible Events, as placed by Elsie, aged almost 10.

A = 1 (on the scale of terribleness)
I made a mistake at netball but it didn't change the score. (No harm done.)

B = 2  Someone was mean to me at school. (I suffered, I need sympathy. Moving on.)

C = 3 All day people kept putting the wrong size marble in our marble run, so one part kept breaking and I had to keep fixing it and the sellotape didn't stick properly and they didn't even say they were sorry. (Just let me vent, OK?)

D, E, F: no scenario for these so far. Any suggestions?

G = 7 When my Granny dies. (I can see this can't be fixed but only one person dies and it is inevitable.)

H = 8 When my dog Ivy had to be put down. (That really was terrible and it still makes me cry.)

I = 9 I might do an experiment that results in everybody getting frozen. I know how to undo the damage, but it would cause something worse to happen. (Purely hypothetical. I admit I have never had a 9 experience.)

J = 10 (I contributed this scenario.) War in Wellington. All the houses are burned to the ground and everybody in Wellington dies. (Affects many people, changes my life, and it can't be fixed.)

How to use Elsie's Scale of Terribleness
Your child or grandchild: "Today was the worst day in my entire life." Sigh, sob.
You (after hugging): "So how was it on the Scale of Terribleness?"
Your child, thoughtfully: "About a 2 or a 3."

Sunset and a good book

Two book reviews in a row?

Just a coincidence.

Sometimes you just do read a run of excellent books and want to spout on about them.

Two other excellent books I have read lately:

A Delicate Truth by John le Carre. Penguin, Australia (2013)
The Antidote: Happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking, by Oliver Burkeman. Text, Melbourne 2012

The woman who wasn’t afraid

(For Cecilia Vincent)

She wasn’t afraid of angina.
She wasn’t afraid of the buzz-saw
carving through her ribs:
just fix it, she said.

She wasn’t afraid of lazy brain:
give me a jigsaw, she said.
She wasn’t afraid of loneliness:
just love me, she said.

While everyone else
was fixing and giving and loving
she dragged her life from under the bed
and made it dance again.

— Rachel McAlpine, 29 July 2006


Image: poster of Rosie the Riveter, Wikimedia, Creative Commons licence.

Of poetry, blogging and death

On 4 April 2013, my friend Diana Neutze died, after defying multiple sclerosis for well over 40 years.

Diana Neutze (center) with friends on her 70th birthday, 9 March 2009

She had survived for decades by micro-managing every minute of her life, training and instructing a team of dedicated, hand-picked angels (known as carers). 

Inevitably Diana also planned every detail of her death, funeral and burial. The funeral was just right and left me feeling downright happy. 

I was one of those she asked to give a short talk. Others gave a full picture of her life and personality—both of which were vivid and triumphant. I decided to talk about just two things, her poetry and her blog. These reflected my role in her life, which was highly specific: I published her last two poetry books (Furthermore and Reflect); set up a web site for her when requested; set up a blog for her, against her will; and communicated with 53 of her friends and relatives each time her carers posted another blog entry—which, as it turned out, was quite often!

To me these were light burdens because my daily work is all about online communication, accessible web content and the social web. My purpose was to keep the creative part of Diana alive and active and goal-orientated. 

We are lucky if we find a way to be useful that returns more than we invest. My reward came from the "Blog Alert" group—they were hugely appreciative of this simple way of keeping in touch with Diana, and I felt plenty of love coming my way.

The text of my talk follows. I was trying to convey in very few words how writing and social media combined to enrich Diana's life, both inwardly and socially. And I wanted to share snippets from some of her 53 blog-alert supporters.

Farewell to Diana

She did warn us:

… as I have lived, so I will die: fiercely and with full intent.

I want to talk about two features of Diana’s life: her poetry (an individual activity) and her blog (a group activity).

Writing is not just recording a feeling or thought or other experience. Writing is a dynamic process that sculpts and illuminates and transforms experience. As Diana wrote:

my poetry is a good listener, 

and even a teacher,  

skewing my words sideways 

to create a different pattern, 

a wake-up call. 

Writing a poem can make sense of the incomprehensible, and it can help to make the intolerable tolerable. It is a spiritual exercise. Diana wrote:

there is no escape. All journeying must be inward.

But writing became more and more difficult, until everything had to be “written” in her mind and then transcribed by her carers.

Unlike most of you, I am one of the few people who managed to make Diana do certain things against her will—mainly remove the odd semi-colon, and above all, to start a blog. She was vehemently opposed to the blog. She despised the very word blogging. But miraculously, she obeyed me. After that, she could share her poems instantaneously with a large audience.

Diana’s blog gave us all an extraordinary opportunity.  She looked death in the face and invited us to look over her shoulder. This was terrifying, but it was also a privilege.

Strangers also read her blog. For example, she has never met any of the Otaki Ukulele Group.  But last Thursday, when they heard about her death, they played two songs in her honour.

The end of poetry coincided with the end of life.

Dead End

The particularity of pain   

takes over the mind  

right to the very edges, 

an amorphous sludge  

which leaves no space for poetry.

Some of the Blog Alert community wrote valedictions in advance, and I'd like to read some of their words.

Vivienne Stone: All the way through her life’s journey, Diana has actively chosen how she wants to live.

Miriam Frances: Meditation has enriched Diana’s life, and poetry has illuminated it.

Abie Horrocks: She has such an amazing capacity to listen and be cheeky and wise and honest and realistic and prophetic and a little scandalous—sometimes all at once!

Diony Young: Her words and poems always open doors to new places.

Jacquie Pryor: In her poetry, she doesn't avoid the difficult issues, especially the one that is hardest of all: death.

Maureen Eppstein: The clarity of her vision shines through her poems like the light through her walnut tree.

And finally John Chambers speaks for us all about Diana's legacy.

John Chambers: Every time I'm at a difficult juncture, I spontaneously think of her, I hear her words in my heart, I feel the courage and the caring and the power—and I will always think of her, and I will always hear her words.

9 April 2013

These web sites and Diana's publications will be managed by her literary executor, Gabrielle Faith, in future:

Diana Neutze's blog, with many poems

Diana's web site, with more poems

Do you really love those old books you have kept?

Shelves of dusty yellow books of some significance.

Lurking in the hallway are a bunch of old books that have been important to me for one reason or another. And this morning Kim Hill interviewed poet Mary Fuefle, poet, who lavishes white-out on old books to reveal a morsel of poetry on each page. The concept of erasure art appealed to me. I immediately invested in a bottle of liquid paper: not something one would normally use in this digital age.

Surely among those Harlequin romances, Proust, Japanese novels, books on sumo and and other miscellany were plenty of candidates for erasure art?

I picked up one at random—Time on our Side: Growing in wisdom, not growing old by the distinguished psychologist Dorothy Rowe. And inevitably began reading it.

I remember loving this book in 1994 and nodding over insights that lived up to the title. Yet today I could barely be bothered skimming a few chapters.

One interesting chapter is "Fearing to grow old", describing how our concepts of young, middle-aged and old vary wildly according to our own age. Even this chapter I could barely read, because the benchmark has shifted so radically since the date of publication. Reading about people in their 60s being treated as geriatrics (and regarding themselves that way) was more than I could stomach.

Life expectancy rose dramatically last century. That is truly wondrous, a miracle. But it makes this book, doubtless profound in its time, irrelevant to my impatient mind today.

The irony doesn't escape me: I am applying ageist prejudices to a book published 20 years ago.

Will I use this book for erasure art? Couldn't bear to. 

From scanned PDF to OCR to Word to ebook: not so fast, mate

I have been trying to explain to a friend why she can't just take a scanned PDF of a book, get it converted into a Word document with Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and send it straight to Smashwords.

Now, Smashwords is fantastic, and every author should check it out. Starting with your Word document, the Smashwords software (which bears the splendid name of Meatgrinder) converts a single source manuscript into every popular form of ebook, including epub, iBook, Kindle and of course the familiar PDF.

And OCR is fantastic. Who would have imagined  that software could virtually read photographs of the pages of a novel and translate the squiggles into pages of words.

However, OCR has its limitations.

Every few months when I have a spare minute, I puddle away at preparing my backlist for distribution as e-books. My plan is to put the old novels up for free—no hurry, though.

Yesterday The Limits of Green had my attention. That was my first novel, published by Penguin in 1985. Below is a sample of how it emerged from the OCR treatment. Characters were indeed recognised, but not always correctly. OCR is more like willing puppy than an expert.

I see at least 13 errors in 16 lines, not counting the formatting. Yes, a human hand is needed—and I am happy about that. I'm thoroughly enjoying my copyediting chore because this involves re-reading a novel I wrote in my youth. Such exuberance! Such reckless confidence! Such mobile-phone-less ingenuity! I look forward to releasing this baby into the wild.